Arena received the 2010 Industrial Hygiene award for his efforts developing and upgrading the laboratory’s industrial hygiene databases.

Fermilab’s Industrial Hygiene Award is given annually to a Fermilab employee or group whose efforts have resulted in substantial progress to Fermilab’s Industrial Hygiene program.

Arena received the award June 3 from ES&H head Nancy Grossman, ES&H employee Dave Baird, acting Computing Division head Vicky White and CD’s Amy Pavnica and members of the Computing Division’s foundations and enterprise applications group.

Beginning with his early years in the Environmental Safety & Health Section and now as part of Computing Division’s Enterprise Information, Arena has been instrumental in both the conversion to and the development of numerous industrial hygiene databases to web-based Oracle systems. His ability to understand the Industrial Hygiene Subcommittee’s needs have helped him to create database tools that are relevant and useful now and for years to come.

Arena has developed several industrial hygiene database systems including the Industrial Hygiene Plan database and more recently the statistical upgrades to the Industrial Hygiene Samples database.

The Industrial Hygiene Plan database provides division, section and center industrial hygiene representatives with a tool to plan and track industrial hygiene work for the coming year. The statistical upgrades to the Industrial Hygiene Samples database calculate descriptive sample statistics including, sample size, mean, median, minimum, maximum, standard deviation, and percent above the exposure limit. The application also permits users to download the data into Excel and group materials to increase sample size for analysis.

— Amy Pavnica, CD

In the News

Milestones for the Tevatron and LHC

From Cosmic Variance, a Discover Magazine blog, June 18, 2011

This past week saw two big milestones for the two big operating high energy particle colliders in the world. At these machines, we measure the number of collisions with the rather arcane unit of “inverse barns”, which is essentially a measure of inverse cross sectional area. It’s just like if you are throwing darts at a dart board across the room with your eyes closed: the bigger the dart board, the more likely you are to hit it, and the more darts you throw, the more hits you get.

The term “barn” came from the early days of nuclear physics when Fermi quipped that a nucleus is “as big as a barn.” And so a new physics unit was born: one barn is 10-28 m2, about the size of a big nucleus. At the Tevatron at Fermilab, we’ve just crossed over 10.0 inverse femtobarns of integrated luminosity, after over ten years of operation in what we call Run 2 of the Tevatron. At the LHC at CERN, we just saw the integrated luminosity counter roll over to 1.000 inverse femtobarns. It’s kind of like the difference between your 10-year old car rolling over to 100,000 miles, and your new year-old car rolling over to 10,000 miles.

Getting to know your Fermi Site Office

Mike Weis, head of the DOE Fermi Site Office, wrote this week’s column.

Michael Weis

As many of you know, I joined the DOE Fermi Site Office earlier this year. By providing more information on our work and responsibilities, my colleagues and I hope to foster the good communication and strong partnership that our office enjoys with the Fermilab community. We all have the same goal: to be good stewards of the Fermilab site and keep our laboratory at the forefront of high-energy physics research.

The Department of Energy maintains local site offices such as ours at each of its major laboratories. Primarily, DOE site offices:

review contract performance,

deliver timely government services and approvals to help the laboratory execute its mission,

serve as the DOE Office of Science representatives for laboratory stewardship.

DOE and Fermilab’s management company, the Fermi Research Alliance, LLC, have a performance-based management and operating contract. This contract is rather long and complicated as it spells out the federal regulations and DOE rules that apply to the Fermilab site. The Fermi Site Office helps the FRA to implement the contract in the most efficient, safe, secure, and effective way, with the goal of achieving the greatest scientific output possible. Our commitments to Fermilab include:

empowering the laboratory to make decisions on its own whenever possible,

eliminating red tape that adds no value to the operations of the laboratory,

integrating our activities with the laboratory to avoid duplication,

asking tough questions to help the laboratory optimize its performance– we expect the laboratory to do the same for us,

maintaining a strong partnership with the laboratory.

The Fermi Site Office, located on the sixth floor of Wilson Hall, comprises three teams. The Business & Contract Support team provides oversight of the management and operating contract. The Environmental, Safety and Health and Program Support team works with Fermilab staff to assure the effective implementation of ES&H, Safeguards and Security, and other activities. The Programs, Projects & Facilities team oversees large projects such as the construction of the NOvA experiment and provides federal stewardship of the laboratory. You can find more information about these teams on our website or you can stop by our offices in Wilson Hall anytime.

Our main goal, of course, is the advancement of science. In a future column, I will explain the relationship between the Fermi Site Office and the Office of High Energy Physics, which is responsible for overseeing Fermilab’s scientific program. In the mean time, my colleagues and I are looking forward to working with you.

Safety Update

ES&H weekly report, June 21

This week's safety report, compiled by the Fermilab ES&H section, includes no recordable incidents and three injuries requiring first-aid treatment: While moving equipment, a service subcontractor suffered a finger injury; An employee noticed a tick on his leg and needed medical help to have it removed; and an employee was stung by an insect.